News

Masstech And SAM Innovation Partnership

13/04/2017

CAN / UK: Masstech and Snell Advanced Media (SAM) have announced that the two industry innovators have formed a powerful partnership to speed and simplify how television and multi-platform video newsrooms manage and move content between production, archive and distribution processes. Debuting at the upcoming 2017 NAB Show, tight integration between the SAM VIBE News Solution and Masstech's award-winning media management and archiving software empowers SAM users with the ability to easily and efficiently archive, locate, retrieve and share news content between sites.

Leveraging the new SAM interoperability alongside established integration with NRCS offerings including AP ENPS and Avid iNEWS, the Masstech software enables news content to be automatically archived at the end of each newscast. For each story in the rundown, the corresponding media files are automatically copied from SAM sQ production and playout servers into the Masstech-managed archive, and stored alongside the news scripts and rich metadata. Content can also be archived to the Masstech system directly from the SAM software interface, independently of the NRCS.

The benefits of the new integration are further amplified when finding and retrieving content from the archive. Users can locate stories and clips with the native search capabilities of their NRCS software or through new Masstech tools embedded within the SAM user interface. Unlike basic storage management solutions, the Masstech-SAM combination takes full advantage of associated news scripts during searches, making it faster and easier to locate and re-use valuable, relevant content. Archived video clips can be previewed within the SAM or NRCS interface, and then fully or partially restored to SAM servers with just a few simple clicks.

In addition to streamlining content archiving and retrieval, the integration also gives SAM News customers access to Masstech's uniquely powerful newsroom workflows, including the ability to easily exchange content between multiple sites such as station groups. Users can search and retrieve stories and content from other locations' archives as well as their own, while the Masstech Media Wire feature lets users feed stories with video to other newsrooms in their organization with a simple drag-and-drop action in their NRCS. In both cases, the Masstech software transparently handles all technical details with no further effort from the user, including file transfers and any transcoding required to address differing NRCS or production platforms between sites.

"We're excited to partner with Masstech, who share our spirit of innovation and have proven their deep understanding of newsroom customers' needs," said Neil Maycock, EVP and General Manager, Media Software Solutions at SAM. "Our goal is for the SAM VIBE News Solution to be the fastest and most flexible multi-format news editing and publishing system available, and our integration with Masstech enables us to seamlessly extend those attributes to archiving and content sharing workflows."

Masstech will exhibit in booth #SU3202 at the 2017 NAB Show, while SAM will showcase its solutions in booth #SL1805.